WASHINGTON – With more than 1 million active-duty personnel scheduled to join the ranks of America’s 22 million Veterans during the next five years, the President has proposed a $140.3 billion budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

u arent even debating my point that spending more than the next 20 biggest armies COMBINED is ridiculous and is not justifiable by ur allegation that we have to protect them. Ha, we protect China, Russia, India? Wtf r u talknig abt nigga

We spend more on the military than on all other discretionary programs combined.

And reptiles don't really want to cut Medicare or Social Security because, ya know, they would never win another election.

So they want to cut taxes (ostensibly on everyone...but the cuts do not help the poorest Americans who pay no tax, do little to help Americans between the 30-70%tile of earners, and disproportionately benefit the wealthy) and cut "welfare."

Except that "welfare" in the traditional sense of the word hardly exist anymore. And safety-net programs, which provide a little cash assistance to certain families with children but primarily fund food-stamps, housing assistance, school lunches, child-care, help with heating in the winter and so on, now only account for about an 1/8th of the federal budget. There isn't much to cut. So reptiles end up being as reckless fiscally as the Democrats, but they are proud of the fact that they don't do anything to make the world a better place while spending all that money.

tl;dr Republicans don't want to destroy the middle class, per se. In fact, they would probably rather not. Ya know, Eisenhower or whatever. But their desire to keep rich people as rich as possible, to make USA "special" and to make being poor in our country as undignified and terrible as possible just kind of has that collateral effect.

or maybe republicans would rather focus on increasing the economic pie for everybody, even if that means there are larger income gaps? would you rather have a poor poorer as long as the income gap is decreased?